


Lamb

by x_art



Category: The Exorcist (2016)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-07
Updated: 2016-10-07
Packaged: 2018-08-20 02:36:16
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,338
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8233103
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/x_art/pseuds/x_art
Summary: It's a sin. If the Church finds out, there will be no St. Aquinas, no rehabilitation or concern. They’ll excommunicate him so fast his head will spin.





	

 

 

 

 

 

“It’s wrong.”

“I know.”

“And a sin.”

He wants to laugh, turned to look out Tomas’s window. The rain has stopped and the shiny black road below is decorated with long ribbons of gold and blue. Away in the distance, a street light is about to bite the dust—it flashes on and off in an uncomfortable, uneven cadence. Off, then on, then off a ragged few seconds later, then immediately on again. It must drive them mad, those trying to sleep in the nearby flats.

“Marcus?”

He sighs and his mirrored self sighs, too. “I understand the concept of sin, Tomas. I’ve seen enough of it to last a lifetime.” He laughs. “Some in the church would even say I’ve been a willing participate.”

There is nothing for a long moment, and then Tomas says, or mutters, rather, “I can’t.”

He turns. Tomas is standing on the threshold of his bedroom, half in half out, arms crossed tight around his chest. He’s still dressed for the weather. His black jeans and anorak create a negative space for what little skin he’s showing, and his hands and face almost glow in the weak light. The scene is evocative, like something from one of those big, expensive art books that you find in those big, expensive book stores. If Tomas wasn’t wearing what he’s wearing, if he wasn’t frowning at the floor, Marcus would think he’s looking at a painting.

 _‘The Last Temptation of Tomas,’_ and he bends his lips in a crooked smile. The title is fitting—picturesque Tomas is so very, very beautiful and so very ashamed. “I could debate the concept of sin with you, Tomas, but I won’t. It’s late and I’m tired.”

That somehow makes things worse and Tomas scowls.

Marcus tries again, this time with a little more gentleness, “It’s all right. I’ll live.”

Tomas shifts from one foot the other, then glances quickly up at Marcus, a brief movement as if touching something hot. “I’m sorry.”

Marcus shrugs and turns back to the window. He doesn’t want Tomas’s easy pity or his keen understanding. “It’s okay.”

“But it’s not,” Tomas says, suddenly insistent. “I shouldn’t have— It was just that I was—”

He closes his eyes and tips his head back as Tomas trails off. He can’t stand much more of this. If he’d been thinking clearly, he would never have assumed, even anticipated. But the day had been particularly brutal and he’d wanted something to sustain him until morning. _A little Tomas,_ had been all he’d been thinking when he’d ushered Tomas into the flat and locked the door. A little Tomas with his sweet lips and strong arms.

“Marcus?”

He runs his hand over his head. He needs to visit the barber soon; his hair is getting long. “What would you have me say, Tomas? I wanted you, you said no. Case closed, end of story.”

“Yes, but—”

“Do you want me to find another place to stay?” He hopes the answer is no. Even with this thing between them, Tomas’s flat has become a sanctuary and he’s not sure he’ll be able to make himself leave. Attached so quickly. The thought is frightening and he hears it in his own voice when he asks, “Is that it?”

“Of course, not, I—”

Marcus gestures sharply, cutting Tomas off mid-explanation. “Enough. I’m going to bed to get what sleep I can. I suggest you do the same. It’s going to be a rough day tomorrow if today was any indication.”

“Marcus.”

At the end of everything he can take, he turns so fast his heel slips on the wooden floor and he barks his knee against the desk. His mouth is open to shout, to accuse, when he meets Tomas’s hesitant gaze.

So, shame and fear, but not of the flavor he’d thought and if he’d listened with his heart instead of his ears, he’d have understood. Tomas’s stance says everything: arms crossed but not to ward away. Half out, yes, but also half in. It’s a shock, the realization, and it hits his belly with the force of a sledgehammer.

However, if they’re going to do this, there’s one thing he needs to make perfectly clear, even to himself—especially to himself because he’s already given too much away and he has so little left. “I’m not Jessica,” he says, adding silently, _If I let you go, it will be just for the moment._ _And you have to ask._ The words—said and unsaid—are a warning, promise, and plea, and Tomas hears all three.

With a deliberateness that Marcus can see, Tomas casts his doubts aside. He drops his arms and tilts his head, that pugnacious angle that Marcus has seen more than a few times. And then he steps back and makes a courtly gesture towards his room. “After you. Please.”

Three meters across, a bare distance that Marcus covers quickly, the memory of the week before playing out as anticipation and desire kindle: … _his hand on Tomas’s arm as they leave the Rance’s at dawn, almost fleeing because he needs a moment of peace and so does Tomas. They only get a few blocks, heading towards the bus stop, when Tomas mutters something under his breath and pulls, yanking Marcus off to the side, to a narrow fissure between two tall homes._

_Marcus doesn’t have time to draw breath before Tomas is on him, pushing him against the brick, fumbling for his mouth and zip, his hands frantic._

_Shoving Tomas back because this has to be a trick of the demon, Marcus is nonetheless startled to find that Tomas’s skin isn’t bubbling and his pupils are clear. Tomas’s mouth, though, is working and his eyes are miserable but from terror and need, not the thing that is nesting inside that poor girl’s body._

_Still…_

_‘Not here, Tomas,” he says, his breath hanging in the air. “It will see.”_

_Tomas’s eyes widen but he nods and steps back._

_They return to their original path, Tomas now leading with Marcus following. When they get on the bus, they sit in separate rows._

_The ride is short and they’ve only gone a few stops when Tomas jumps up. Marcus rises, too, puzzled because they’re far from Tomas’s flat._

_Rushing, almost running, Tomas leads Marcus down a block and then another, ending up at an old graveyard. When they come to a halt near a row of crumbling mausoleums he wants to say, ‘Seriously?’ but it’s somehow fitting after all they’d been through. Tomas takes his hand; he goes willingly._

_They fuck between two crypts, lost in the shadows. Tomas is needy, never once speaking but that’s all right. Marcus has no words and he’s never needed them for this, anyway. When they’re done, resting against each other, he kisses Tomas’s neck, pushing happiness away because he shouldn’t be happy, not now…_

He still shouldn’t but he can’t help a shiver of it when Tomas pulls him to the bed. They undress each other, their kisses and hands just as confused and frantic as the first time, the only time. When they’re naked, they fall, Tomas on top, Marcus below.

It’s simple what they do, unsophisticated and barebones, but not, he’s happy to discover, quick. Tomas’s fear is gone and he’s open and accepting when Marcus rolls them so he’s on top. Tomas even smiles. It’s a goad, Tomas’s brilliant, white-toothed smile, and Marcus leans down and bites Tomas’s lip, swallowing his groan.

They begin to push in earnest, Tomas wrapping him up with long arms and legs.

When Marcus comes, his cheek smashed against Tomas’s, he buries the words he wants to say in warm skin.

Tomas, however, isn’t so reticent. His body tenses and his head drops back. He cries out, arms and legs suddenly relaxing, releasing. _“Miel de la peña,”_ he whispers, eyes closed.

Still in a daze of white, Marcus pets Tomas’s damp skin from ribs to hips as he hunts down the translation. He smiles when he finds it. _And with honey out of the rock should I have satisfied thee._

Blasphemy.

Blasphemy, but lovely and heady, just the same.

***

Tomas waits until Marcus falls asleep, then sits up. The blinds are open. He should have remembered them. Anyone could have seen in. Luckily, it’s full dark because the days are getting short. Soon, it will be dark by five; soon the night will far outlast the day.

He closes his eyes and rubs his stomach. He’s hungry, he realizes. Marcus must be, too.

They had eaten breakfast with the Rances, sitting around the table, all looking as if they’d just been in a street fight. One of the things Marcus had told him at the beginning was that they would need to take care of their bodies every bit as much as their souls. Proper rest and food would be essential in the war to come. Which means he should get up and make something to eat but he doesn’t move, feeling the fugitive heat of Marcus’s body.

This was a mistake.

It was a sin.

What was he thinking? He doesn’t trust Marcus, doesn’t even trust himself any more.

If Olivia finds out, she’ll think he’s gone crazy, fallen prey to the sickness that has already invaded much of the Church.

If the Church finds out, there will be no St. Aquinas, no rehabilitation or concern. They’ll excommunicate him so fast his head will spin.

It’s a sin. No matter how he justifies it, no matter how many excuses he throws at it, it’s still sin. With a heavy sigh, he gets up and pulls on his shorts.

*

One thing about Marcus, Tomas muses as he opens the refrigerator and looks inside, is that he does like his food. Mangoes, papayas, bacon, some sort of peppered ham from the Polish butcher three streets over—his fridge has never been so full. For himself, he’s always strived for simplicity, preferring the staples like grains, dairy, beans. Marcus has a much different sensibility. Maybe it’s due to the way he’s grown up, no childhood to speak of, faced with the dark side of life from the very start.

Or maybe Marcus is just a sybarite because it’s there in everything he does. The way he speaks, the way he eats, his abrupt gestures that carry the smoothness of the sensual.

Remembering the latter, the back of Tomas’s neck flushes and he retrieves the bacon and the carton of eggs, needing the normality of cooking to quiet the stab of lust.

*

He takes his time, relishing the sensation of the eggshell splitting and cracking when he taps it on the edge of the countertop. Inhaling the comforting scent of bacon as it sizzles and pops in the frying pan. This is life at its most simple, filled with grace, something everyone experiences at one time or another. Just because he‘s experiencing it after thirty-two hours of fighting a foul thing from hell, after having sex with a man, doesn’t make it any less powerful. He’s still thinking on that when a noise behind him makes him jerk, his heart abruptly pounding

Things being how they are, there’s a tiny, breathless moment as he wonders what’s behind him, the demon or Marcus? And then cautious arms slide around him from behind and a warm body presses close.

“That smells good,” Marcus says, resting his chin on Tomas’s shoulder. “It woke me up.”

Tomas stirs the eggs; they’re almost done. “The olfactory sense is one of our most powerful. It can trigger even the most lost of memories.”

“Where did you read that? National Geographic?”

“No,” Tomas says, hiding a smile that Marcus can’t see. “People Magazine.”

Marcus snorts and then chuckles, tightening his arms so there’s no space between them. “So erudite.”

“So pressed for time, more like it.”

“Hmm.” Marcus nods and begins to stroke Tomas’s belly with his thumb. “I remember those days, always at the beck and call of the parishioners. Always someone to look after.”

Marcus’s touch is distracting and his breath stutters when he asks, mostly to keep talking, “Do you miss it? Those days?”

“I never had many to miss, but no, I don’t.”

It’s the line between them, the man Marcus was, the man he is now. At his most terrified, weeks ago now, Tomas wondered how long it would take for him to break as Marcus had. Decades? Months? Hours? It was then that the sinful thoughts began to creep in, the _‘I wonder…’_ and the, _‘I want…’_

It hadn’t been unwilling sympathy that had driven him last week in the alley, but it is now and he says, “The eggs are done.” Marcus starts to let go, but before he can, Tomas covers his hands and holds on.

He’s not sure what’s going on. He’s not sure what he’s doing or where he’s heading. This thing that he’s set in motion could be the ruin not just of him and Marcus, but of them all.

The only thing he knows, the belief he clings to when he’s drowning in the burden of hopelessness and horror, is that when he needed him most, God sent him Marcus. _Honey from the rock,_ indeed _._ It’s a confusion and a blessing and, for now, enough.

“I was thinking,” he says, rubbing the back of Marcus’s hands, feeling the fine bones beneath the thin skin. “You can’t be sleeping well on the sofa. My bed is big enough for two and there’s room in my closet for your clothes.” The words are off the cuff, unplanned, and they ring in the air like a bell.

Marcus says nothing and Tomas feels the weight of his offering, wondering if he’s made an error. And then Marcus kisses his shoulder and murmurs, “I’ll go put my things away, shall I?” He steps back, his hands lingering on Tomas’s waist.

Now more than a little breathless, Tomas nods, turns off the burners, and Marcus lets go.

 

_fin_


End file.
